In this episode of Exiting Academia, I sit down with a guest who earned a PhD in Classics & Classical Languages and ultimately became a Director of National Graduate-level programming. This is exactly the kind of story I want grad students and PhDs to hear: you can take a highly specialized humanities doctorate and translate it into leadership work that’s still mission-driven, still intellectually rigorous, and often far more sustainable than the academic job market. We talk through what that transition looks like in practice—how to reframe “academic” skills (research, writing, teaching, program design, stakeholder management) into language that makes sense outside the tenure-track pipeline. I also emphasize the career strategy I coach all the time: stop treating your PhD as a narrow credential and start treating it as evidence of high-level problem solving, communication, and execution. If you’re considering leaving academia, this conversation is meant to give you a clearer map of what’s next—and the confidence to pursue it with intention.